Views of the world from a tiny island

For April: Another mom’s story

See Roni’s blog asking advice for a young girl who is dealing with a crisis pregnancy. This is my contribution.

Dear April,

I’m fifty-six years old now and living a wonderful life, and one of the great lessons these five-plus decades of moving through the world has taught me is that life always makes sense when you look at it backwards.

I can’t count the number of fantastically positive things that have happened to me only because something that appeared at the time to be negative eventually placed me in a time and place where the good could find me, and although there’s not much comfort in the thought at the time the bad stuff is going on … if, indeed, there was ever a pause in the negative long enough to attempt a think ahead to better times … stringing events back along the thread from time to time does help when the shit hits the fan again, as it always does.

Without a doubt, one of the most significant of these circumstances … and the reason I’m writing to you … was getting pregnant at the age of seventeen. I was in my senior year of high school and looking forward to graduation, my first truly free summer, college — life in all it’s glory!

My pregnancy came as a shock to everyone, although it shouldn’t have. You’d think my boyfriend, at least, would have had a clue about possible outcomes of his in-goes, but the news took him completely off guard. (I probably should have paid more attention then to how dense he was, and less to his cute smile.)

My parents went ballistic; a response that was neither honest, nor helpful, since both had a pretty good idea what I’d been up to, but neither could be bothered to pay enough attention to engage … not even when I sought them out and asked for their involvement.

I was neither surprised nor prepared when the verification finally came, but rather detached. Although it was my body that was chucking up every morsel of food that came within a foot of me, beginning to thicken around the middle even without being able to eat more than crumbs, and my boobs that hurt every time I rolled over in bed, I somehow had managed to disconnect these inconveniences from any thoughts of a person actually having the temerity to start growing inside of me.

With the confirmation, however, it was time for me to snap out of my hormone-inhanced stupor and come to grips with the two-by-four that now smacked me upside the head … I was going to have a baby.

How in hell was I going to do that?

My father, in an attempt to take control of the situation, arranged a back-alley abortion for me in San Francisco’s China Town … a reputable butcher, I’m sure, and one coming highly recommended. (This was 1968, you see. Pre-Roe v Wade.)

My mother had called the Salvation Army home and booked a room for me in case the illegal abortion thing didn’t work out. I could be comfortably housed for the next 5 to 6 months, give birth somewhere they had handy, and they would arrange an immediate adoption.

Problem solved by both parents, not too much muss and little fuss, and I might even have a say on which road taken. After all, there was no reason to ruin my whole life just because of a little mistake, was there?

Once I faced the fact that I was carrying a child, I started falling in love with her — somehow I always knew she was a she. In my mind’s eye, I could see her at two and five and twelve and going to college and getting married. Sure, some of that had more to do with compensating for my own dreams that now looked to be rapidly losing potential, but much was a growing connection between me and this new person I was making.

War broke out on many fronts. Terrible, horrible, war, and I doubt I need to go into any detail on how this looked, sounded or felt. (Throwing up every 10 minutes did make it interesting, I suppose.)

I fought both my parents and made a deal with my boyfriend; we’d marry, but I wouldn’t ask anything from him but minimal financial support, his name and whatever legitimacy a ring would convey on our child. He took me at my word, and shortly after our wedding he went off with a girl who picked him up at our door and stayed with her for days. She was the first of many, and in fact when I went into labor with our second child I had to wake up another girlfriend to let him know that I was on the way to the hospital.

The six years I spent married to my kids’ dad were some of the most painful of my life, but options and choices were few and far between. I had made my bed, and now I had to stick there. With no skills and an interrupted education, there was no way I could support myself, much less myself and my kids, so we lived a miserable lie that none of us were happy with.

Life wasn’t awful … my kids were beautiful and healthy … but it was tough. We lived in a 12′ x 45′ trailer parked on my in-laws land for years, had unreliable and dangerous cars when we had any car at all, and so little money that a gallon of milk seemed a luxury and a steam iron was an impossible wish. This sort of life in a happy family with a man who loved me would have been an mildly inconvenient starting point, but as it was, it was little more than a stop-gap measure to keep a roof over our heads until the whole thing fell apart.

When the kids started school I saw an opening. At least with them a bit older, I’d be able to get back to school and work. One evening I ran into my husband’s girlfriend du jour and told her to take him and keep him. (She did … well for a few years, anyway.) I divorced my husband, went to night school and got three jobs … one was necessary just to pay for babysitters for when I went to the others.

Throughout my twenties, I struggled to make ends meet. While working to get through college and put food on the table I had jobs as a dental assistant, a cocktail waitress, a bar tender, a worker in a walnut factory, and many other thankless and low paying endeavors. I took what I could get, some full time, some part time, and I juggled and juggled and juggled and made do and compensated and compromised.

For a few years my schedule involved getting up at 5:00 to get housework done, the kids showered, dressed and fed and off to school and me to my M-F, 8-5 job. After work, I’d pick the kids up from the sitter, feed them dinner, and when my night sitter arrived I would go to either my Tues/Thurs 7 – 11 dental surgery job or my Wed/Fri/Sat 8 – 3 am waitress job. Sundays I did laundry, mowed my lawn, and so on.

As a single mom, everything fell to me, and there were times when I was so tired and so discouraged that there seemed no end in sight, no light flickered at the end of any tunnels. I was poor and exhausted and the last drabs of my youth had long dribbled away.

Into my thirties, things started picking up. Carefully laid plans began to mature and some bits of luck fell my way, as well. My kids were now teens, so they became babysitters rather than needing them. They did well in school, had loads of friends and were good company for me.

When I was 41, my kids were both grown and living independently, so I bought myself a backpack and an around-the-world ticket and took off for the trip I’d always dreamed of. I found myself a whole new life, then, and have been living it ever since.

Those first two kids of mine are now 38 and 36. I have a 6-year-old granddaughter, and if I had it to do over again, there are very few things I would change. All the hardships I faced made me strong, and who I am now has everything to do with the life I have behind me.

I am proud of my accomplishments and of raising two human beings as terrific as my kids are. (They really are amazing people, even if I do say so myself!)

I often wonder what life for all of us had been like if I’d chosen differently. The daughter I conceived at seventeen did not have an easy time. My son, 18 months younger, faced many challenges, as well. Had I not been the sort of person I am … doggedly determined with a tenacity not easily compromised, willing to work my ass off year after year with little reward, and able to live through much of my youth without parties or any social life at all … I doubt any of us would have turned out as well as we have.

I live on the other side of the planet from my older children and my granddaughter, and haven’t shared space with any of them in more than five years. Although we are in regular contact, the physical distance is a great sadness I feel most days.

At least in part, I’m sure, because I missed so much of my kids’ lives while they grew up while I was far too busy to do much more than the grueling tasks that kept us fed and sheltered, I now have two young children, both adopted. They are my joy, my life, my heart, and my little family brings happiness I’ve never known before.

So far, however, I have never been under the same roof with all four of my children together.

With a 32-year gap between my second and my third kids, I figure I’ve experienced the consequences of many of my decisions regarding my children and a range of parenting, but if you, April, were to ask me for advice on what you should do, I wouldn’t have any.

Life is hard, and it just got a lot harder for you. There are choices to be made, and only you can make them. There’s no way around this, and you must decide for yourself … and for your child.

All I have to offer is my story, and so far it is happy enough. My hope for you is that when you are fifty-six and looking backward down the thread that has followed you from now to then you will say the same. Anything more will be a bonus.

Were there happy moments during the time that you were raising your kids? From this description, it sounds almost as if the only happiness came when you were well into your 30s. If I were reading this as a pregnant teen, I think I’d feel overwhelmed by the idea of a 15-year-stretch of struggle and unhappiness.

Interesting. Do you feel that Sandra should have said that parenting was easier for her than it was? Maybe tone down the hard parts a little? If you do feel that way, could you explain it a little? ‘Cause I’m not really sure I see how that would be helpful….

” Life wasn’t awful … my kids were beautiful and healthy … but it was tough ”

This kind of sums up for me the tone of Sandra’s post. She decided to parent, loved and loves her kids, was loved by them in return, worked hard for them and it wasn’t always sunshine and roses. That sounds honest enough to me.

She talks about how, even though life was tough, things worked out for the best in the end. She has a wonderful relationship with them (I am blessed by our friendship to know this for a fact) and she doesn’t regret her decision at all. Reading this, I don’t think I would have been discouraged at all.

Sandra-
THANK YOU SO MUCH for sharing your story. I am sorry this comment is so late. I knew you had posted your story, however everytime I sat down to read it I was interrupted with a teething (3 coming in!) 1 yr old or something else. So, I printed it off last night and FINALLY got a chance to read the whole thing.
Your story shows how with strength and determination almost anything can be accomplished. What a strong women you were/are.
I really appreciated you sharing this with April and everyone else. (I need to finish mine.)
Again, thank you for contributing in helping April with her life changing decision. She is very fortunate to have so much help from those that don’t even know her. I find that all of you that are sharing your stories with her are TRULY BEAUTIFUL people.
-Roni
Almost forgot-I feel somewhat responsible for all the comments -you know where-. I don’t know the situation and I don’t want to know – I just want to say..I’m sorry!

Wow, Sandra. What an amazing story. I think your honesty speaks volumes of both the good and the bad. Yes, life is hard and requires us to make difficult choices. I agree that life ultimately works out in the way it is supposed to.

“I was poor and exhausted and the last drabs of my youth had long dribbled away.”

would be hard for me to digest if I were 15 and trying to decide whether or not to keep a child. And yet Sandra had a second child, so it seems unlikely that parenting her first child was strictly a long slog of work, disappointment, and fatigue. There had to be some reward in it for her to do it again. It just would have been more balanced, I think, if she had also shared *specifically* what the rewards of parenting were for her at the time…not in retrospect, not 10 years into it. Because teenagers aren’t really equipped to digest those kinds of timelines, or that sense of delayed gratification. Even if Sandra concluded that for the first 15 years, the struggle far outweighed the joy, I think the story could’ve been more balanced.

And no, I’m not some angry birthmom. I’m actually pregnant with my first child. And I’ve noticed that some of my friends like to emphasize the negatives: “I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in 2 years!” “My boobs are hanging down to my knees! Get ready to say goodbye to yours, too.” “It’s non-stop and I’m so exhausted. Just you wait.”

I prefer to talk to friends who say things like, “I have never been so exhausted and my body is a mess, but I love this kid so much. Some days it feels like the difficulty outweighs the joy, but most of the time it really feels like it’s worth it.”

If I wanted to, I could describe my own pregnancy in very negative terms. I suffered two miscarriages and a subsequent major depression before conceiving this baby. I have to inject myself with blood thinners every day to prevent another loss. We were told after our 12-week screen that the baby had an abnormally high risk of Down Syndrome and lived with that knowledge for a month before the amnio revealed that the baby is healthy. I was hospitalized last week for possible listeria poisoning (turned out to be stomach flu, thank God) and dehydration and am covered in bruises from blood draws and IVs (thanks to the blood thinners). My eyes are literally blood red from the vomiting. When my OB came in to see me, she said, “my God, you can’t get a break, can you?”

And yet I would describe this pregnancy as a very happy one. I *could* give a litany (and I did here, just for the sake of argument), but for me, there isn’t a question that I’d happily do it again. I’m SO grateful for this kid. The difficulties hardly register. But I could freak my friends out–particularly the ones still struggling to conceive–with my stories if I put all the emphasis on the downsides.

Just wanted to add, in case I’m causing confusion: I’m not directly comparing my short-term difficulties with Sandra’s years and years of struggling to raise her children in such stark circumstances. I only shared my specific details as an illustration of how *any* story can sound completely sunny or terribly dark depending on where you put the emphasis.

It’s relatively easy for me to be positive about my situation. It’s really not that bad. I wouldn’t expect Sandra to look back on her early years and say, “Oh, my love for my kids made it a breeze!”

I’m just saying that, if there were moments of joy during that time (and I suspect there were), it would’ve been nice to hear *specifically* about them.

Congratulations on your pregnancy, and all the best wishes for a wonderful experience and a healthy, happy and beautiful baby!

Although I wish I had a happier story to tell, the fact of the matter is that I became pregnant with my second child primarily because I couldn’t afford the medical attention that would have allowed me to prevent a second pregnancy, and my husband, contrary to all prevailing evidence, was convinced that reproduction had a ‘mind over matter’ element I couldn’t quite manage. (In other words, he figured that if I got pregnant, it was my problem.) My circumstances were immediatedly complicated even further and my life became even more difficult.

I totally and absolutely adore the son I bore in 1971 … you can read him responding to the label “amazing” above, and even thought I’m not Aqua Man, I have earned his love and respect … and fully understand that there were valid and wonderful reasons beyond my knowing that he came into this world, but that doesn’t begin to negate the fact that my life those years was very, very tough.

This post was addressed to a 15-year-old in a quandry over her life in the near and distant future, and my story in all its painful glory is exactly what she needs to hear as she makes her decisions. Leading her down some garden path that would have stopping to smell the roses every couple of yards an expected luxury would be supremely unhelpful.

How great that you’re pregnant and how wonderful the experience must be. Best of wishes and many, many years of happiness with your child. It’s a beautiful thing to be a parent.

Have to disagree with you though on the “you’ve got to be sure to present more joys” approach to Sandra’s telling of her story. Again, the point of Sandra’s letter isn’t to write a persuasive essay on the joys of parenting or the tragedy and loss of relinquishment. It’s to document her experience. Period. And that’s why Sandra wrote what she did. The letter is as honest as she is.

Might April, or any other expectant mom, read the letter, maker her decision and, after time has gone by say “You made it seem so negative”?. Sure. Maybe April (or any expectant mom) would find parenting to be worth the struggles and trials…….I sure do. But also, had Sandra downplayed the negatives and upped the joy aspect, April (or any other expectant parent) might just as well say, ten years later, “You didn’t let me know how hard it would be”. None of us knows, intimately, what any expectant mom’s situation is, with the ins and outs and ups and downs and complexities that human experience brings. To try and color our situation or “balance” our experience only rocks the boat further……we really have no way of knowing what’s in the mind of an expectant mom.

“And no, I’m not some angry birthmom”

That you were a birthmom didn’t occur to me. Looking back over your post, nothing jumps out of your dialogue as ID’ing you one way or the other. I just figured you were someone I haven’t run across yet who has been reading Sandra’s blog. I don’t believe that all people with a different opinion to mine are birthmothers ;o)

“would be hard for me to digest if I were 15 and trying to decide whether or not to keep a child”

Respectfully, eastofwest, I have to say: If this girl is not yet mature enough to receive, digest, process and sort out the information coming her way about parenting or relinquishment, then how is she mature enough to raise a child? We all feel overwhelmed with information, choices, decisions. But one of the hallmarks of being an adult is facing those choices with maturity, knowing that it is not only our own lives we are directing.

I think your post was poignant and sincere, and spoke of the reality of your life. Your love for your children did come through, in my reading of it. I’m glad you didn’t gloss over the difficult parts, because those are important to understand as well.

I’ve read your blog from time to time, and while our views are quite different on some major points about adoption, I respect what you wrote here for April.